Don Greenwood (in blue shirt) helps break ground in 2009 on a U.S. Navy jet engine test facility in Meridian, Miss.
[ALUMNI FEATURE]
DON GREENWOOD
Math major to construction president
Don Greenwood (BSCE’76) President, Construction Burns & McDonnell
“I’ll be a math major,” said Don Greenwood, 1976 civil engineering alumnus and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, native, upon his first semester at Iowa State in fall 1972. But, after the first semester, Greenwood wanted to study something with “more action.” He sifted through the Iowa State catalog and read about other degrees. He came upon one that said “…be good at math and science…civil
engineering.” “That’s me!” The switch from math to civil engineering led him on a career trajectory as a major builder in the American construction industry.
In 1994, he started at Burns & McDonnell (Kansas City) as the first construction division employee and president. In the nearly 20 years since, Greenwood and the company hired 752 employees and build a revenue of $800 million in the construction division alone. “With about 25 percent of controlled growth every year (since 1994), the construction division of Burns & McDonnell has had a tremendous run,” Greenwood said. The challenge, Greenwood said, came in matching engineering talent with construction expertise on projects. Burns & McDonnell has created jobs for specialists who work in each of the company’s 25 construction disciplines i.e. water/wastewater treatment and power generation. The concept fits the company’s typically large-scale “cool, complicated” projects, as Greenwood said. One
In his first three years at Iowa State, Greenwood lettered as tight end on the Cyclones football team. However, he thrived in math and science. After choosing civil engineering, he said he didn’t want to be an engineer “in a traditional sense, sitting behind a drafting board.” So, in two summers interning for Larson & Unzeitig Construction (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), he learned how closely civil engineering was tied to the construction industry in the practical sense. “Working for a small company, I learned how to do most things that are required in a construction project.” After graduating from Iowa State, he worked at Larson & Unzeitig for another 12 years. Greenwood then moved to Kansas City, Missouri, to run Wescon, Inc., for five years.
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Photo courtesy of Don Greenwood
FAMILY FIRST: Don Greenwood’s family poses for a portrait in November 2012. Pictured from left are Don, wife Sharon, son Dan, daughter Katie Leever and son-in-law John Leever.
such project is the Lockheed Martin new-generation fighter jets and multiple manufacturing facilities, built in Marietta, Georgia, and Fort Worth, Texas, in 1998 and 2002, respectively. “This was my most rewarding and most challenging project, given the risky environment we built in as well as the interesting nature of what we were building,” he said. After almost 40 years in the construction industry, Greenwood says he will retire from Burns & McDonnell at the end of 2014 or 2015. He equals his devotion to the national construction industry with dedication to Iowa State University. He and his wife, Sharon, recently donated $2 million to establish the Greenwood Endowed Department Chair of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering. The Greenwoods also have supported the Construction Engineering Endowment for Program Excellence. And, Don and 39 other Burns & McDonnell employees donated to the CCEE department in 2009 to renovate 322 Town Engineering Building. Electrical and mechanical building systems are exposed in this classroom for hands-on learning. Don currently is an Iowa State University Foundation governor and earned College of Engineering’s Professional Achievement Citation in Engineering Award in 2003. Sharon is a 1975 alumna of Iowa State’s family environment program and works at Midtec Associates in Lenexa, Kansas. “The Iowa State civil engineering program has allowed me to do what I do today. If my contribution continues to enhance the teaching in the program, then I’m all in,” Don said.
Iowa State University Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering